Melanie Sumner's remarkable fiction has received early recognition from The New Yorker, which published two selections from Polite Society. Her work has been anthologized in New Stories from the South and Voices of the Xiled. Polite Society resounds with unusual spirit and searing honesty. Darren, a not-so-nice young woman from Tennessee, joins the Peace Corps for lack of a better idea. Fitting in with Southerners was hard enough, but trying to understand friends, lovers, and herself while unemployed in Senegal sends Darren reeling. The world that spirals around her is full of outrageous encounters, interracial affairs, and nights of drunken revelry. Against the backdrop of a society that is governed by hospitality and good manners but is full of strangers and unfamiliar customs, Darren runs headlong into her own insecurities, fears, and desires. With sly humor and acuity, Melanie Sumner brings readers a youthful heroine who is stubborn and selfish, loving and libidinous, and, ultimate
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The Peace Corps has provided fertile ground for the empathic vision and sharp wit of a talented writer, as is evidenced in these elegantly written, slyly humorous short stories set in Senegal. "The Edge of the Sky," about the dissatisfied wife of an American ambassador, is a powerful opener, but it is incongruent with the ensuing tales chronicling the increasingly drunken misadventures of Darren, a 25-year-old Tennessee ne'er-do-well whom the Peace Corps sends to teach at a university that has been on strike for a year. Self-destructive and myopic (literally as well as figuratively), yet endearingly tenderhearted, Darren stumbles her way through training camp and life on her own in an apartment in Dakar, with attendant affairs with Senegalese men, a trip to Mali, a Christmas visit from her parents and civil unrest. Sumner brings an exotic locale and its denizens, black and white, to life in vivid detail. The Senegalese, "as tall as giants," saunter along, taking "agile, delicate steps, like horses." Darren's mother's eyes were "sea green, shadowed with an intelligence that would have been unnerving if one could stare into them longer than the second she permitted." This is a striking collection from a powerful new voice.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This entertaining debut (sections of which have appeared in The New Yorker) looks ironically at the twentysomething generation as represented by Louise Darren Parkman, slacker extraordinaire. Unemployed, on the rebound, and a spiritual outcast in her native Tennessee, Louise lies herself into the Peace Corps and soon lands in Senegal preparing to teach English as a foreign language though she lacks previous academic experience or any knowledge of the country's customs and languages. Having thus set up her protagonist for misadventure, Sumner details Louise's follies in seven linked stories abounding with culture clashes, drunken excesses, and doomed interracial romances. Louise, an inebriated not-so-innocent abroad, will never get a service award from her government, but she provides tragicomic variety for her bemused Senegalese friends and lovers, within whose hospitable society she is a fascinating, if destructive, anomaly. In fact, her outrageousness may not be that far removed from U.S. diplomatic officialdom, as Sumner hints slyly in the introductory tale. Recommended for libraries collecting comprehensively in contemporary fiction.
Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Melanie Sumner, a 2010 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, is the author of the forthcoming novel, The Ghost of Milagro Creek. Her previous books include, The School of Beauty and Charm, a novel, and Polite Society, a collection of short stories. She won the Whiting award in 1995 and was a regional winner for Granta's Best Young American Novelists competition. Her publishing history includes short fiction and creative nonfiction in many anthologies and textbooks including Best of the South, and numerous magazines and journals including The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, and Atlanta Magazine. She has appeared on NPR and Georgia Public Radio.
Sumner earned her MFA from Boston University and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been a resident at Yaddo and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and was the final author chosen for the Seymour Lawrence imprint. Currently she lives in Rome, Georgia with her two children, Zoë and Rider, ages 11 and 7, and teaches Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University.
Sumner earned her MFA from Boston University and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been a resident at Yaddo and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and was the final author chosen for the Seymour Lawrence imprint. Currently she lives in Rome, Georgia with her two children, Zoë and Rider, ages 11 and 7, and teaches Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University.
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
